


Unless Continents Collide

by desert_neon (sproutgirl)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: But his hearing impairment is not a major focus of the story, Character Study, Clint/Bobbi - Freeform, Deaf Clint Barton, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-14
Updated: 2015-10-14
Packaged: 2018-04-26 08:14:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4997350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sproutgirl/pseuds/desert_neon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Clint doesn’t know if he loves Coulson. It’s hard to say you love someone, especially when you’re not even sure what love is</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unless Continents Collide

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Slow Road to Ruin](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4926133) by [shovel_bunny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shovel_bunny/pseuds/shovel_bunny). 



> Title from _Driving With the Brakes On_ by Del Amitri. 
> 
> Thanks go to shovel_bunny, who, funnily enough, posted her own [Del Amitri-titled fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4926133) the same week I had decided to use a different lyric. I didn't actually have a fic for it, though, just the title. So thanks for giving me the motivation and inspiration to work on it these past few days!

Coulson turns the car off the road they’d been on, creeping through the sparse woods and navigating by moonlight. Clint rocks in his seat and uses his superior eyesight to look for obstacles Coulson might miss, but he doesn’t find any. They aren’t talking, both of them concentrating on the task at hand, the mood grim but determined.

Clint doesn’t know if he loves Coulson. It’s hard to say you love someone, especially when you’re not even sure what love _is_. Clint doesn’t exactly have the best track record with that. He’d loved his momma, and Barney, and he’d even loved his dad, but that was a child’s affection, stupid and worshipful, and a different kind of love anyway.

He’d thought he’d loved Natasha, at one point, until she’d told him he didn’t. She turned out to be both wrong and right; he loves her, fully and unreservedly, just not in the way he’d originally thought. He’d thought he’d loved Bobbi, too. He’d been sure of it, in fact, certain in a way that pointed to ulterior motives buried deep inside his brain. (He’s _still_ working on figuring out what the hell had been going on there, though he thinks maybe now he might be on the right track.) Nat had tried to set him straight on that one too, but he hadn’t listened, hadn’t wanted to listen, until things had gotten so screwed up he hadn’t had much of a choice. It had hurt more, too, hearing the awful truth in Bobbi’s angry, pained voice.

Coulson had found him a day later, squatting in one of the unassigned rooms of on-base housing. Clint had been too upset and self-flagellating to tell Natasha (who’d been in Brazil anyway), but Coulson hadn’t asked him to talk, had barely even said a word himself. He’d merely grabbed Clint’s go-bag, waited for Clint to grab his weapons and his ears, and bundled him off to a waiting SHIELD car and driver. Clint had spent most the ride convinced they were headed to a job, until the driver pulled onto a familiar street and stopped in front of a building across from one of Clint’s favorite nests. Even then, it hadn’t been until Coulson and ushered him inside and up the stairs, and then into Coulson’s very own bed that Clint had truly understood what was happening.

“Get some sleep, Barton,” Coulson had said softly, and, miraculously, Clint had.

Coulson had turned out to be as steady personally as he was professionally, and Clint had found himself seeking his company more and more. Then Budapest had happened and, after that, Clint knows — he _knows_ — that Coulson will always have his back. And then it had been East Anglia, where Clint had refused to take the shot, the AIC yelling at him that this wasn’t going to turn into another Romanoff situation, goddammit, Barton, take the shot. But Clint hadn’t known, hadn’t understood why this quiet little farmer had needed killing. Intel for the team had been sparse, with way too many redactions and far too few explanations. Clint’s own observations had turned up nothing, and if he didn’t see it, there probably wasn’t anything to be seen.

“Agent Barton.”

“Sir,” Clint had replied, hands steady on his bow and eyes steady on the target, despite the fact that Coulson’s voice had surprised the hell out of him, given that Coulson had been in South Africa with Natasha at the time.

“The target has developed, and is currently selling on the black market, a formula that will wipe out eighty percent of the world’s wheat crop.”

“Is that all, sir?” 

“No, but do you really need more?”

“No, sir.”

“Take the shot.”

Clint had taken the shot. He’s never been under-informed about a target again.

So, he trusts Coulson. But that isn’t why he feels a building need under his skin, it isn’t why he smiles a little easier in the man’s presence and his shoulders loosen whenever Coulson returns, safe and sound and mostly in one piece, from a mission. He trusts Natasha too, and Fury. But he hasn’t wanted to kiss Natasha in a long time, and he’s never wanted to kiss Fury. (Well, that one time when Fury had shown up at the Triskelion with a battered and drugged Coulson, who had been missing for nearly a week. But, again, that’s different.) He trusts them to do what needs doing, to follow their own moral codes and make the call.

But Coulson . . . Coulson is just _good_. Not that Nat and Fury aren’t, but it’s different. It’s a faith in humanity that most people in their business lose very early on. Coulson trusts people. Moreover, he trusts Clint. He has faith in Clint, and if Clint ever wonders what it would be like to have more than Coulson’s faith, more than just his trust, well, that’s all on him. Coulson has never given any indication that he’s had the same thoughts, the same daydreams and fantasies, about Clint. 

Until last night.

It had been fast and sudden and desperate, Clint still shivering from the accidental swim he’d taken, fully clothed from boots to hearing aids, in the Baltic Sea. An adrenaline fuck, seeing as how they’d both survived the firefight and subsequent explosion that had killed three quarters of their team. The last remaining member of their twelve-person crew had been captured and taken beyond their immediate reach, and Clint had had no other choice but to dive off the boat and hope like fuck Coulson had a plan to finish the job and get Natasha back.

Coulson’s plan had been to first save Clint from potential hypothermia, then travel south to where they’d probably taken her, and hole up in an empty vacation villa to wait for morning. Clint doubts his plan had included fucking Clint senseless, but that’s what had happened anyway. Warm fingers had seared across Clint’s skin, heated kisses thawing him from the inside out. Coulson’s body heat blanketing him had made Clint gasp, and his cock had practically made him sob with relief and pleasure. When it was over, Coulson had wrapped him up tight, kissing his shoulder and neck, the shell of his ear.

“Get some sleep, Clint.”

Clint had only understood because Coulson had been so close, because the words had reverberated against his jaw. He’d wrapped the fingers of one hand around Coulson’s forearm, and the fingers of the other around his gun, and obeyed.

They haven’t said much this morning, communicating with gestures and expressions, easily decipherable after all these years, and a few actual signs. Clint looks over to Coulson now; his hands are tight around the wheel and he’s concentrating on maneuvering the car as quietly and as quickly as he can over the terrain. They sky is just beginning to lighten, and Clint can see the lines around Coulson’s eyes, the determined set of his jaw. The compound they’re approaching is well armed and heavily guarded, and there is more than a chance that this is a fool’s errand that will wind up with one or both of them dead.

But they have to try. Not only to save Natasha, but because, in just a few days, these guys will have the means to kill millions of people with a single push of a button.

“You ready?” Coulson asks as the dirt road leading to their target appears.

Clint hefts the guns he has in both hands, situating the one in his left for quick transfer to Coulson. “Yeah.”

Coulson accelerates and the car leaps onto the path. There’s no more stealth, no hiding their approach. Just before the entrance, Coulson pulls up on the emergency brake while still pressing the gas pedal to the floor, and the car spins, the back left side slamming into the solid gate — which parts for them — as bullets start raining down. Clint hands off the gun and grabs another, then they’re both out of the car, returning fire. Clint has to slide across the hood of the car to join Coulson on the right side of the wall, and then they move, with purpose, across the courtyard, Clint one step behind Phil’s left shoulder.

Clint doesn’t know if he loves Coulson, but he does know this: he will follow Coulson anywhere. Into the depths of Hell, if need be, with no backup and no extraction plan. He will go where Coulson leads, every damn time.

 

\--end--

**Author's Note:**

> Another open-ended fic, you guys! Please don't hurt me.


End file.
